Many van vehicles have rear doors which swing from a hinge. Especially when considering rear door of the van-type vehicle where there are split or double doors, the doors do not have a rigid pillar onto which they can close. In such situations, it has been the practice to provide a door wedge to ensure that the door is snug in the door opening and to inhibit any vibration of the door.
Referring to FIG. 6, prior to the present invention, a solid elastomer piece 11 was often provided on a metal backing 13 connected to a door 15 by a threaded fastener 17. Due to the build tolerances of the door 15 and a flange 19 of a door opening 21, it was very hard to gauge the height of the door wedge 11. If the door wedge 11 was too high, the door would be difficult if not impossible to shut. If the door wedge was too low, it would be ineffective. To meet the above-noted challenge, shims (not shown) were placed between the metal backing 13 and a top flange 23 of the door. The placement of the shims could only be done by trial and error and was time consuming and not a pleasant task to the assembly operator.
In an attempt to alleviate the problems associated with the door wedge 11 shown in FIG. 6, a new door wedge 25 (FIG. 5) which was self adjusting was provided and was mounted on a shaft 27 and spring biased to an engaged position by coil spring 29. Although an improvement over the door wedge 11, the door wedge 25 presented a special problem in that it made the angle of the contacting portion 31 of the door opening flange very critical. Instead of being in the correct angular orientation as shown in FIG. 5, if it were more toward the line 33 for the same vertical door load, a larger horizontal load will be transferred through the wedge 25, resulting in a lower vertical door load to cause displacement of the wedge 25, allowing the door 15 to also be displaced. If the angle of flange 31 was more along the line 35, the door wedge 25 would be wedged in position and would not adjust to its more correct position, causing the door 15 to be too difficult to close, and would decrease the amount of vertical gap for which the wedge will compensate.